Wishes
by Gwyn Paige
Summary: Benvolio visits Mercutio's grave six months after his death. Mercutio/Benvolio, established relationship. Rated T for the surprise ending; no, it's not what you think it is.


_**This fanfic was previously published as a single chapter in my multi-chapter fic "The One Great Fanfiction." This storyhas since been deleted (for reasons of my own), but I liked this particular pairing so much that I decided to publish it as a separate oneshot.**_

_**Please review and, as always, enjoy! :)  
**_

Benvolio stood by the worn gravestone, the sparse wind ruffling his hair.

It was a mild September afternoon, with a slight nip in the air that promised a cold winter to come. And wasn't that appropriate? The one winter he would have no one to share a fire with, no one to huddle under a blanket with, no one to distract him from the snow pelting the windows outside, would be a hard one.

This winter, Benvolio would be alone for the first time in seven years.

HERE LIES OUR BELOVED MERCUTIO

A GOOD MAN AND YET A BETTER FRIEND

WHO DOTH WALK THIS EARTH NO MORE.

He could recall the words on the gravestone without looking at them; they were permanently engrained in his memory as if it was a gravestone itself.

He had been to this particular gravestone for what felt like hundreds of times in the past six months since Mercutio was killed. He knew every crack, every crevice, every word and letter on the worn surface. He had stained it with his own tears countless times, clutching it desperately, longing for the touch of his lover's skin instead of cold, indifferent stone.

He doesn't cry anymore, though. He's been bled dry, wrung out, done, finished. He's just an empty pitcher now, with nothing left to spill. He wonders if he will ever be able to cry again.

But the sadness never goes away. Every morning he wakes and remembers anew that there will be no one in the bed beside him. Every time he walks through the market square he remembers that he will never again have to stop Mercutio from causing havoc in the streets. He wishes he had been more lenient about it, less strict. He wishes he could tell Mercutio that if he would return, he'd let him have a hundred fights, a thousand, a _million_, if it would only bring him back to him.

He wonders if he will ever be happy again.

He _tries_ to be happy. He tells himself that it's a lovely day, that life is a song, that the world is a beautiful place to be in. He tells himself these things and more, but he has yet to convince himself that they are true. He simply cannot see the beauty in the day or life or the world without Mercutio in them.

He had thought about suicide many times.

But he pushed this notion aside, telling himself that ending his own life wouldn't bring back his lover. He personally did not believe in any kind of afterlife, so he knew that killing himself would not reunite him with Mercutio. His love was undeniably, irreversibly gone. There was nothing left except Benvolio's pain.

He stares at the gravestone, reads the engraved words for the thousandth time. There is a bunch of lilies he had collected earlier clutched in his hand, and he slowly, carefully places them in front of the stone. He wished he knew Mercutio's favorite flower. He wished he had bothered to ask.

That was another thing that had begun to happen—he started to realize how little he really knew about this man whom he had known for seven years. What was his favorite color? Favorite food? Favorite make of sword? (Benvolio himself knew very little about this particular topic, but still thought that it would have been considerate to ask about it to Mercutio at one time or another.) So many little things that by themselves seemed so insignificant, and yet combined they revealed that Mercutio was still, after all this time, a question mark. A rogue. A mystery that Benvolio was too late to solve.

"I'm sorry I never asked you all those questions," Benvolio whispers to no one. "I'm sorry I couldn't fill in the blanks quickly enough. I wish I knew _more_."

He sighs. "I wish you were _here_, Mercutio."

Something in the earth trembles. A hole appears in the patch of earth before the gravestone. The lilies are sucked into the ground. A half-flesh, half-skeletal arm drags itself out of the earth and, along with it, a body.

The decaying, ragged figure struggles to its feet and stands shakily on its legs loosely covered with decaying flesh.

Benvolio can only stare.

"I suppose that sometimes," Mercutio says with his signature smirk, "wishes really _do _come true."


End file.
